The Colour Man

Nick Andrews uncovers a macabre secret when he moves into the house on the cliff - a mystery which draws him into Black Bay's crumbling community of eccentrics and the insane. He gropes into the distant past - lured from Black Bay's ruined fort, its rocks carved with records of smallpox and bubonic plague, into a hidden sub-terranean world of cruelty and obsession.

Despite the increasing danger to himself and his new wife and step daughter, Andrews persists in his attempts to unravel the puzzle, until finally, deep in the heart of the Australian bush, he losses control of the events he has so carefully set in train.

In his second novel Ian Moffitt has turned inward to etch the dark landscape of the criminal mind in a tense psychological thriller.

Reviews:

“Ian Moffitt’s second novel is a highly entertaining psychological thriller that is fast and economical, and manages not to come to an end until the last paragraph.”
- Barbara Jefferis, The Australian, 1983

“Ian Moffitt can’t write a dull word. The Retreat of Radiance established him as a major figure in Australian literature. The Colour Man, can only enhance his reputation….”for those who yearn for a truly satisfying thriller, and who don’t mind a pretty heavy dose of the macabre, The Colour Man is a winner.”
- Cosmopolitan, 1984

The Presence of Evil (The US title of The Colour Man)
“Moffitt’s second novel after the highly praised The Retreat of Radiance, may be about “an obscure grocer in a drear street in a decaying suburb on the edge of a continent far beyond the centres of power, but elegant prose, swift plotting and fascinating characters raise it far above its parochial setting. “
- Publishers Weekly, 1985

“…a thriller with considerable psychological depth.”
- Des Partridge, The Great Weeke, 1983

“The Colour Man is a psychological thriller involving a handful of people in a grubby Australian coastal village…The horrors here are effective, though far from overdrawn.”
- L.V Kepert, Sun Herald, 1983